How to price tattoo work without undercutting yourself

This article contains no numbers, because your numbers are yours. What it contains is a method, and the method is the part most artists are missing.

Undercharging almost never happens on purpose. It happens at eleven at night, in a DM, when somebody has described a tattoo vaguely and asked how much, and you have thirty seconds and no framework — so you guess low, because low feels safe, and then you are committed.

Fix the framework and the pressure goes away.

Decide the method when nobody is waiting#

The single most useful thing you can do is write your pricing method down, on a calm afternoon, before the next enquiry arrives.

Not your prices. Your method. The rules you apply to arrive at a number.

Most artists end up with some version of one of these:

By the session. A block of time, priced as a block. Simple to explain, easy to schedule around, and it stops the clock-watching that hourly rates create on both sides.

By the piece. A quote for the whole design after seeing the reference. Best for work where you can estimate reliably. Rewards you for getting faster; punishes you when you misjudge.

By the hour. Honest and flexible, but it makes the client watch the clock, and it quietly penalises you for being efficient.

Most working artists use a hybrid: a minimum below which it is not worth setting up, a session price for larger work, and a quoted total for pieces they can scope confidently. Whichever you pick, the value is in having picked it.

Count the hours you are not counting#

Here is where the money actually leaks.

For a piece of custom work, the time in the chair is only part of the job. There is also:

• Reading the enquiry and going back and forth on the brief
• Drawing, then redrawing after feedback
• Sourcing or building reference
• Setting up and breaking down the station
• Aftercare instructions and the follow-up message
• Photographing the finished piece
• The admin: scheduling, deposits, reminders, rescheduling

None of that is optional and all of it is work. If your price only reflects the hours with the machine running, you are working a second unpaid job attached to the first one.

You do not have to bill for each item separately. Most artists should not — itemised invoices invite line-by-line negotiation. But you do have to count them, because a price set against only the visible hours is a price set too low.

Track it honestly for two weeks. Write down every minute a booked job costs you outside the session. Whatever that number is, it is the gap between what you thought you were earning and what you are.

Never quote from a vague description#

“How much for a small rose on my forearm?”

There is no answer to that. Small means four different things. Forearm means five different placements. Rose could be a single line or four hours of shading.

Quoting a number here is how you end up doing six hours of work for a three-hour price, because you anchored yourself before you understood the job.

The move is to convert the vague question into a brief before you say anything about money:

Happy to quote this. Send it through the booking form with a reference image, roughly where on the arm, and the size in centimetres, and I will come back with a range.

Two things happen. You get the information you need. And you have moved the conversation off Instagram and into a system, which is worth doing anyway — see moving from Instagram DMs to a real booking page.

Quote a range, then narrow it#

For custom work, quote a range from the written brief, and say what determines where in the range it lands.

Based on what you have sent, this is somewhere in this range. Where it falls depends on how much detail we keep in the background and how the placement wraps. I will confirm the exact number when we finalise the design.

A range is honest, because you genuinely do not know yet. It protects you from a low anchor. And it tells the client that scope drives price, which is the single most useful thing they can understand before they start adding things to the design.

Say the number and then stop#

The mechanical part that trips up almost everybody.

You give the price. There is a pause. The pause feels like disapproval. So you fill it — “but I could do a smaller version”, “I have a gap next week if that helps” — and you have negotiated against yourself before the client said a word.

Most pauses are people doing arithmetic, or checking a calendar, or thinking. Let them.

Say the number. Stop. Wait.

If they come back and say it is more than they expected, that is a real conversation and there is a good answer to it: change the scope, not the price.

Completely understandable. We could do this at a smaller size, or simplify the background, and that brings it down. Or we can split it across two sessions so it is easier to spread out.

Less work for less money is a fair trade. The same work for less money is not, and every time you make that trade you have set a new reference point for what your work costs.

The discount problem#

There will be a friend, a regular, a person with a genuinely difficult month, an artist you admire. Sometimes the right answer is yes.

Two rules keep it from spreading.

Say it is a discount. Not a lower price — a discount off your price, given for a stated reason, this time. If you quietly charge less and never mention it, that becomes what you charge.

Never discount in public. A price offered on a comment thread or a story becomes the price everyone reading expects. If you want to run something for a quiet month, run it as a defined offer, with an end date, and let it end.

Raising your prices#

You will need to, and it is less dramatic than it feels.

• Pick a date and apply it to bookings made from then on. Honour everything already quoted. That single distinction removes almost all the awkwardness.
• Do not explain or apologise. Your prices went up. That is a complete sentence. Nobody explains their prices to you.
• Expect to lose some people. That is what raising prices does. The question is not whether anyone leaves, it is what the rest of your calendar looks like afterwards.
• Change it once a year, not once a quarter. Predictable is professional.

The one-page version#

Write this down and keep it where you quote from:

1. My method is (session / piece / hourly / hybrid).
2. My minimum is the point below which setup is not worth it.
3. I do not quote without a reference image, a placement and a size.
4. I quote a range and say what moves it.
5. I say the number and then I stop talking.
6. Scope changes the price. Sympathy does not.
7. Discounts are named as discounts, and never offered publicly.

Seven lines. Read them before you answer the next enquiry, and the enquiry after that, until you do not need to.

None of this needs software, but a booking page that collects a proper brief before you quote makes it far easier to hold the line. That is the first thing we build.

The artists who hold their prices are not tougher than you. They just decided in advance.